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Wednesday, January 18, 2017

Donald Trump, Social Media, And Crowdsourcing–The Traditional Media Are History

Much has been made of Donald Trump’s use of the social media, especially
Twitter, to communicate with the American public. The new President gets social
media like a teenager - its immediacy, spontaneity, and viral appeal.

Trump also understands the nature of the traditional media – in a tailspin
because of the transformative challenges of live streaming, interactivity, and
the millions of individualized Internet sites providing every possible take and
spin on current events; and unable to play catch-up. Their fortunes in decline,
and the demand for anchored, reasonable, and boring news broadcasts headed for
zero, they founder in hype, gotcha journalism, and celebrity.

Of course yellow journalism is nothing new. A hundred years ago newspapers
published the most scurrilous, unfounded, and outrageous stories about everyone,
especially politicians. Editors knew temperate, thoughtful, reasonable
journalism did not sell newspapers.

When newspaper editors found that unusual, remarkable, and surprising stories
of real life were not enough to satisfy readers’ demand for the truly grotesque
and twisted, the era of the tabloid was born.

Of course The Grey Lady, the venerable New York Times, insisted on
reporting the news in an objective, sensible, and matter-of-fact way; but most
Americans liked their news hot, weird, and fantastical. Long-form journalism is
dead. The issue-long, detailed, and interminably boring features on music by
Whitney Balliett in the New Yorker are things of the past.

Twenty years ago Tina Brown revolutionized the magazine and gave it zip,
allure, and curb appeal. Although traditional critics lamented the demise of
one of serious journalism’s icons, Brown was having none of it. A journalistic
corner had been turned.

Donald Trump has finally sent the New York Times packing. While the
paper will not shutter the shop anytime soon – the AARP generation is still
loyal and tied to print – fewer and fewer people read it front-to-back as they
did in the old days. Online browsing is image-driven and quick. Site visitors
have two or three windows open simultaneously and flip among them for the
most personally relevant, topical, and emotive stories. No matter how kicky and
hip the New Yorker may try to be, it can never match the twisted
outtakes in cyberland.

The online Daily Mail – electric reincarnation of the The Daily
Enquirer, both leading with deformity and the grotesque - had 77 million
daily unique users in 2011 and has an estimated 200 million today. The New York
times by comparison has only 70 million with lower projections over the next
five years.

The Daily Mail is tame by comparison to the independent sites on the
Internet. Every possible point of view, perversion, twisted preference, and
political screed can be found within a few clicks.

Current events, such as a
Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton story, quickly go viral and are filtered,
edited, and distorted in a million different ways. Who would read the Grey
Lady or even the juiced-up New Yorker when this Internet array is
available at a touch?

This, of course, is why the traditional media, political pundits, and
academics are in a twit. They are being benched, taken out of the game just
when it is becoming interesting, and sidelined. Fewer and fewer people are
paying attention to them anymore. They are supernumeraries.

What is worse for ‘experts’ is the phenomenon of big data and crowdsourcing.
A million bettors in an online market will always estimate the number of gum
balls in a jar more precisely than any geometrician. Betting markets on
Presidential elections 100 years ago always predicted electoral outcomes far
more accurately than pundits. Nate Silver, today’s big data genius-in-residence
has never been wrong; and Ladbrokes (popular off-track betting site in the UK)
is almost always right.

Big data solutions are becoming more and more an option for the likes of
Google who rather than relying on in-house geeks goes viral and asks for new
algorithmic ideas for better search engines from whomever is interested. The
results are always promising, innovative, and surprisingly feasible.
In other words Donald Trump is on to something. Mediated news and analysis
are things of the past. The genie is out of the bottle, and crowd intelligence
is marginalizing priests, pundits, and inside-the-Beltway know-it-alls. The
Internet has not only obviated the need for ‘objective’ mediation; it reflects
the way Americans think.
The American presidential campaign of 2016 was like no other. Thanks to
Donald Trump who, with his outrageousness, Hollywood glitz and glamour,
three-ring circus and side show, bare-knuckled, take-on-all-comers brawls,
one-line zingers, Las Vegas glitz and Rat Pack showmanship, big ego, big image,
and hot salesmanship, we are finally perfectly attuned to a presidential
candidate.

Liberals, progressives, and socialists who for decades have been trying to
re-form America into a European, international, Utopian model of cooperation,
multi-cultural harmony, and rational discourse and reasoned conclusion have been
blindsided by Donald Trump and bewildered by the passionate support of his
followers. How could tens of millions people be so bamboozled by such a
huckster and vaudevillian? How could they be so taken in by a man with no plan,
no political coherence, and no experience with governance or leadership?

Trump’s followers, say the Left, must be more hopelessly ignorant than they
had thought, more intransigently backward and unmoved by rational argument
and the rightness of historical secularism. They are hopelessly inbred with few
faculties of judgment. No matter how the Left may try, they refuse to budge and
remain racist, homophobic regionalists.

Trump supporters, however, are the avant-garde, the first wave of the new
facts–last, image-first, post-human generation weaned on the visceral, the
personal, and the immediate. They have understood that in this post-postmodern
world not only do facts have relevance only within changing social context, but
they no meaning at all within the broader world of virtuality. Facts are
subject to faulty memory, imperfect subjective perceptions, historical
revisionism and political hyperbole. Facts are tools for the promotion of
ideas, theories, and hypotheses, bent and twisted to fit them. Facts are
overrated. Truth is fictional, derivative, and meaningless.

There is little doubt that the highly-respected, experienced, successful
older men and women in the Trump Cabinet, will rein in the most outrageous
tendencies of their President and will craft reasonable conservative solutions
to current problems in foreign affairs, education, energy, finance, and the
economy. There is little doubt either than the Trump Administration will form
important alliances with the Republican-run Congress and key legislation will
make its way into law.

As importantly, however, Donald will still be Donald, playing the traditional
media like a violin while reaching out to his millions of supporters on social
media. They elected him and they need to be sure that he is following their
mandate. Since they do not have the experience, education, or political savvy
to parse complicated issues papers and policy statements, they only need to hear
Jobs! The Wall! Putin! Obamacare! and will be satisfied and Trumps constituency
will remain intact and passionate.

Cynical? Far from it. Donald Trump simply understands the dramatic
reconfiguration of American society and the way its members think and
communicate. Trump’s populism is very much real; and not only for the political
solidarity it expresses. Populism means unmediated democracy. Draining the
Swamp, dethroning the princes of the media, lighting up the White House with
glitz, glamour, and Hollywood-Las Vegas-NYC glitter and celebrity, and if not
returning power to the people at least giving them their say.

We are in for a wild ride with many unknowns and ‘unknown unknowns’ as Donald
Rumsfeld was fond of saying. There is reason to be anxious – not because the
Trump Administration will do something stupid like get us into war; but because
his style of governance and communication, and his idea of propriety are
completely foreign to Washington.